Paul Simon’s childhood revolved around music and baseball, but he was not born with the ability to write a good song. It’s something the child of Jewish and Hungarian parents had to work tirelessly for as he came of age in the Kew Gardens Hills neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, a borough of New York City. At one point in his career — way before he’d find the opening stanza of “Sound Of Silence” in the darkness of his childhood bathroom practice space — Simon spent five years writing and recording demos about the worst subjects one can imagine.
“There wasn’t one ounce of quality in that stuff. One of the demos that he did, Connie Francis, a singer in the '50s, had a song called ‘Lipstick on Your Collar,’ and so he does a demo of a song, ‘I Wanna Be The Lipstick On Your Lips.’” Robert Hilburn told CL. “How terrible can that be?”
“And this is Paul Simon,” Hilburn, 78, added. “It took things in his life to lead to the ‘Sound of Silence,’ and once he wrote that one great song he never looked back.”
In May, Hilburn — a child of the '50s who was the chief pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times for more than three decades — released Paul Simon: The Life, a nearly 400-page biography that looks back at one of America’s greatest living songwriters. The book’s bibliography, notes and index span 40 pages, and Hilburn talked to a seemingly endless well of of Simon’s closest friends and family members including one of Simon’s first romantic interests, Kathy Chitty, who is mentioned or referred into in songs like “Kathy’s Song,” “America,” “Homeward Bound” and “The Late Great Johnny Ace.”
In an unprecedented move, Simon himself agreed to meet Hilburn once a month and talk for five hours over the course of a year as he worked on his 2016 album, Stranger to Stranger. Simon — who also agreed to having zero editorial control on the book — had always been articulate and loquacious when being interviewed by Hilburn during his tenure at the Times, but 60 hours wasn’t enough, so he and the famously private songwriter talked more.
“He saw what happened to Elvis, and he was very guarded against being sucked up by fame, so he tried to keep as far away from fame as he could,” Hilburn said.
The guy who wrote “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “The Boxer” and “Mrs. Robinson” was bound to get famous, but Simon still didn’t possess the public persona of others like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young or Paul McCartney who were coming up at the time.
“He would try to do his music and then go back out of sight. There was a point to that. That was protecting his artistry. He knew that the important thing about his life, and the thing he loved was the music.”
And Simon refused to chat with the biographer about anything other than his new music. As hour number 79 turned into hour 80, Hilburn started to fear that the book he wanted to write wouldn’t be possible. Simon, however, eventually caved and gave Hilburn 20 great hours of conversation that revealed not just details about his personal life, but also the intimate intricacies of a creative process that has given folk music some of its greatest songs. In all, Hilburn and Simon talked for 100 hours. Hilburn pored over those tapes and turned in a landmark biography that sheds new light on Simon’s relationship with Art Garfunkel, his disappointment about his 1980 film One-Trick Pony, the dissolution if Simon’s marriage to Carrie Fisher, the creation of pretty much every iconic work by Simon and more.
Hilburn believes that Simon’s farewell tour — which lands at Amalie Arena on September 7 — will truly be the songwriter’s last twirl with the tour life, and he’s never seen Simon so happy or eager to make new music. Watching Simon onstage with his band, yMusic, a sextet chamber ensemble from New York City, is a joyous sight, according to the author.
“Paul tended to be somewhat non-flashy, you know, he was a pretty static performer for most of his career. He didn’t even talk to the audience much,” Hilburn said.
“But these shows he was smiling, he was talking to the audience, and he really is happy. I think he thinks he made the right decision to walk away from touring; he’ll still do music, write songs, make records perhaps, he might write another Broadway play. He’s got the freedom to do anything he wants.”
And after spending decades writing about Simon on deadline, the work on the biography also afforded Hilburn the ability to look into, around and underneath Simon’s songs in a way he never could. It gave Hilburn a new sense of the depth of Simon’s writing and how hard he worked.
“The determination [is] what I think struck me the most,” Hilburn said, adding that a theme of empathy also revealed itself. “There’s a very caring nature about his music that a lot of people probably don’t pick up on because they listen to the songs individually.”
SIMON SAYS
As Paul Simon’s farewell tour comes to Tampa, biographer Robert Hilburn shares his favorite tunes
Despite coming into his own during one of the country’s most formative eras, Simon didn’t necessarily write directly about protest or revolution. He talked about people and he weaved their stories into the songs. Simon has continued to deploy that ability to understand and share the feelings of another into his latest album, In The Blue Light, which features ten recordings of old works, newly considered. In the liner notes, Simon said he chose songs that he thought were almost right, “or were odd enough as to be overlooked the first time around.”
As fans get one last look at Simon playing his songs, they should take the time to notice the care he’s taken in telling our stories throughout his catalog, all in the hopes of helping us understand ourselves.
“I think that’s what touched me the most about how much Paul, how hard he worked, how much he sacrificed for that music,” Hilburn said. “It didn’t come easy. He was not a natural-born songwriter. It took him years before he wrote a good song. That impressed me — how hard work is so important in life and caring is such a valuable trait.”
Read our full Q&A and listen to some of Hilburn’s favorite Paul Simon songs here.
Paul Simon. Fri. Sept 7, 8 p.m. $50-$150. Amalie Arena, 401 Channelside Dr., Tampa. local.cltampa.com.
This article appears in Sep 6-13, 2018.